


A Dying Sun

by orphan_account



Category: Berserk
Genre: Ficlet, Gen, Horror, Introspection, Prison, Wordcount: 100-1.000
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2000-04-23
Updated: 2000-04-23
Packaged: 2017-10-09 02:41:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 807
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/82156
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Griffith in his cell.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Dying Sun

**Author's Note:**

> Ancient fic, probably actually pre-2000.

A rat died in my cell.

It was an old one. Blind. It seemed incredible that it hadn't been killed before. He must have been a crafty one. A strong one, to survive challenges, and quick-witted, to avoid traps and lethal odds.

I'm chained to the wall, so I couldn't reach the little corpse at first. I picked some straw from the floor, wound it into a loop. That's when the guard came with the slop they call food, so I hid the straw loop in my helmet, the one they welded on.

Spent the next few hours trying to reach the rat.

You think that's pathetic? Then, my friend, you have never been locked up and chained to a wall in a stinking dungeon.

I've had plenty of opportunity to observe rats here. I never realized just how smart the beasts are before. Rats eat their own kind, you know. Wise and foolish at the same time. Scurrying about in search of food, killing each other in wars, getting caught in a silly, simple trap when they can't resist the smell of easy pickings.

Just like people. ...Yes, exactly like people.

By the time of the change of guard, I have the little corpse in my hands.

Hm...? No, I'm not going to eat it. I'm not a complete fool. I'm fed enough to keep me alive. That's enough for now. Rats carry diseases. I won't let the plague get me.

They won't let me die. They tell me not to die.

I don't think this one even saw the trap before he walked into it. Blind, like I said. Bumping into walls. As I inspect the limp furry piece of flesh, I see signs of battle, scars around his eyes. He wasn't as old and decrepit as I thought. He had just been defeated by someone stronger. Blind, sniffing out a meager offering to ease his pain, to further his life a little bit longer, reaching for whatever dream of immortality a rat holds... he had his neck snapped by the lash of a simple trap.

My laughter echoes in my ears. I sink down onto the dirty straws, the chill stone against my back.

They've been quiet for a long while, now. Ever since the rat died. I wish ferociously that they'd come back and overtake me, but at the same time... This is me. This is what I'm slave to. Myself. My old obsession. I love every exhausting, torturous moment of consciousness, of the death of the flesh of my mind which is the life of my self.

The disintegration is what tells me I'm still here.

I know what death feels like, because I've been taken under so many times. This body of mine endures, feeds, excretes, but I have died many times within this cell. It starts with the voices. They tell me their stories, their endless stories, until I cease to listen, and they slip in, and I am no more. And then I am again. For short whiles. Every time that I return to myself, I am less. I have the memory of having remembered, having been, having known, but cannot reach those things. Only the very strongest points remain.

They eat my memories. They know me. They know the me I've forgotten, and they tell me they know the me that could have been. And they tell me that that me, or any of the other selves I might have known, now will never be. And I know it's true. They will become me.

They are eyes. Human eyes that open and close, that see and perceive. Within a pulsing red orb of flesh.

I use the sharp edges of the long, torn nail of my thumb to open up the rat's skin from under his jaw, where the skin is tender. The mark of death works to my advantage and after several minutes of trying, the skin opens. I rip the wound wider and see the small worms and bugs already feeding on the carcass. That rare beauty, of life feeding on death, comforts me, and makes me smile.

I start to slip away. It feels like the assault of sleep, but I can hear the hiss of the advancing babble which is to take me under again. They tease the memories out of me, to know me better. When they know everything, that will be the end.

And so I remember the moon.

Bright, so strangely serene, distant, within his changes unchanging, cool, and in his neverending anguish beautiful beyond compare.

What did he reflect? There was something. I rack my brain, I need to remember. The moon is in anguish because he reflects someone else but does not know his own self. Who was it? The moon's oppressor-other, self-other, blinder-other?

Oh yes...

...that was me...


End file.
